COVID-19 : Opinion is lethal, Evidence saves lives.

The World Health Organisation and many other eminent expert bodies are saying that the COVID19 Pandemic is still a long way from being dealt with, 15 months on from the first proven cases of the disease.

Estimates vary depending on who is presenting a narrative and where they are presenting from.

People in New Zealand and Australia are more confident of an end to the pandemic than people in USA, Germany or UK. People across East Asia are confident they will remain with low fatalities, yet are not so confident the pandemic will cease in the West and other places where zero community transmission is not chosen as a strategy, anytime soon. This chart lays out in bleak lines the background to the variance of opinion. It is of course incomplete, and does not reflect the full scope of the situation. It is indicative. 

More cases is always the result of increased transmission, lower cases is always the result of lowered transmission. It is that simple.

source for this graphic : zerocovid.uk

Right now, as I am typing, zero community transmission strategies are protecting the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. In these countries deaths from COVID-19 have been kept to a minimum. In these countries they have not been subjected to repeated National level shutdowns.  In these countries the people's economies are robust and thriving, given the global circumstances. These are the effects of zero community transmission strategies.

Granted international tourism is shut down. International passenger travel is shut down.  Some people's livelihoods in  tourism are adversely impacted, and they are mostly getting support from their governments to get through the pandemic.

Across East Asia and Oceania children are attending school, young adults are attending universities,  the bars and restaurants are open,  local tourism is open,  shopping malls are open. Weddings, funerals and wakes are happening. Life goes on, pretty much as 'normal'.

1.8 billion people.

Protected by an evidence led set of strategies, without the utility of a vaccine.

People still wear masks. People living in East Asia and New Zealand are aware that any outbreak that occurs must be suppressed, and they are well are informed and fully engaged thus when outbreaks do emerge, they and their Governments, local and national, take the appropriate action and suppress the transmission until all cases are traced, all contacts quarantined, the ill are given best possible treatment and all of this is carried out until the virus dies out due to finding no new hosts.

Zero Community Transmission not complicated, it is complex, it is expensive yet cheaper than high fatalities, high long covid rates and repeated economic shocks - it is epidemiology and public health practice at its best, and it is not an extreme set of actions and behaviours, it is mostly a matter of common and collective caring. 

It is not rocket science.

Right now, in the USA and UK and EU and Brazil, a different set of strategies are being deployed and these strategies and policies have caused millions of avoidable horrific deaths, millions of avoidable long term chronic disease cases (1 in 10 of all disease level infections), vast economic harms all of which have disproportionally impacted and afflicted the low income, the poor, the destitute, the chronically unwell and the vulnerable and disabled cohorts of their populations.

Evidence ignored, opinion and belief promoted, every single wheel re-invented turned out to be square, appalling death tolls, long term sequalae for hundreds of thousands of people, vast economic harms.

These slow spread herd immunity strategies are causing immense psychological and emotional harm to hundreds of millions of people through badly managed lockdowns, followed by openings, surges of transmission  and yet more lockdowns, with no end in sight and barely 20% of the UK population  (where I live) exposed to the virus, as these governments push their populations towards a mythical herd immunity in order to 'protect the economy'. It's utter nonsense to claim they are protecting their economies with these strategies.

These strategies have cause wholly avoidable economic damage - from small businesses to self employed, from the live entertainment industry to international tourism we see millions of job losses, businesses going to the wall, entire industries failing.

Here, in the UK where I live, rocket science is nowhere to be seen, and neither is common sense epidemiology. 

There is a pattern where those in power and others online cite the harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management as in epidemiologically sound, proven and reliable zero community transmission strategies.

Behavioural Science, Data Modelling and Economics.

Government Scientists and Advisor cite behavioural science and data modelling as the source of their policy strategies. They do not cite epidemiology, they do not cite virology and they do not cite best practice public health.  The UK Government have claimed all along that they are protecting the British Economy, that "having a strong economy is the best way to ensure a strong National Health Service".

They are failing even in that simplistic task.

Here where I live we have seen multiple waves, shutdowns followed by opening up while community is active, followed by shutdowns as hospitals are over whelmed, and the death toll rises. Cycles of death and harm, all totally avoidable. Yes, the NHS has managed to deal with being pushed to it's limits again, but at the cost of the general service that it provides. Meanwhile American insurance firms buy up local health providers paving the road of insurance schemers 'good intentions'.

Each and every death by covid19 is a horrific, tortured death. 140,000 and rising horrible, painful and very stressed lonely deaths. 

Long Covid is estimated to affect 1 in ten of disease level cases. 

Asymptomatic cases account for 20% of infections, and these people spread the infection without knowing they are doing so. 

There is, within the UK, no effective localised contact trace system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised quarantine support system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised isolation treatment system.

Some people are being paid to not go to work, others must work and be exposed to risks because they are 'key workers' - shop staff, services staff, police, fire brigade, ambulance, sanitation staff, meat processing staff, Amazon staff, factory workers and builders, and many others.

And there are others who are forced to work because the economic support systems are inadequate for low wage earners - people who are low earners who become symptomatic choose to work because the support for quarantine is inadequate, slow and cumbersome. Food banks are feeding hundreds of thousands of families. The charities and their workers are forced to take risks.

This week, 8th March, 2021, we see the UK Government coercing students, parents and teachers to return to fully open schools whilst community transmission is at levels above 23rd March 2020 when the first shutdown was imposed. 

A year later we see no shift to an evidence based epidemiologically sound strategy. A year  later we see the continuation of policy options that are causing avoidable fatalities and long term harms to the people of the UK and to our economies.

The evidence of the lived experience in the UK is that the policies of the UK Government are causing vast harms, and when compared to countries following zero community transmission strategies, the variation in policy and outcome is clear.

In simple terms the difference is between opinion and evidence.

Opinion is lethal, evidence saves lives. 

Opinion, belief and ideology is lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

Gavin Williamsons opinion is that schools are safe for full attendance re-opening. Williamson cites a .002% case rate among students during the September re-opening period. Sounds like a small figure. .002% of 8.9 million students is 17,800+ cases. That is not a small number. Factor in the inadequacies of a centralised contact tracing system that has failed on almost every metric then we have a situation where were do not know how many infections are linked to those cases, what their index cases were, where the virus was transmitted... Gavin Williamson is playing tricks with numbers to push a deliberately egregious policy. 

A recent study on school safety makes this clear. 

"On Feb 22, 2021, the UK Government announced that schools in England would fully reopen on March 8, 2021. 

While returning to school as soon as possible is imperative for the education, social development, and mental and physical welfare of children, not enough has been done to make schools safer for students and staff.

1

 

Without additional mitigations, increases in transmission are likely, this time with more infectious and possibly more virulent variants, resulting in further lockdowns, school closures, and absenteeism. Even when schools were supposed to be fully open, at points of high community transmission, 22% of secondary school children were not attending due to self-isolation.

2

 

In some areas, attendance was as low as 61%.

3

Arguments that schools do not contribute to community transmission and that the overall risk to children from COVID-19 is very small have meant that mitigations in schools have received low priority. Yet the evidence cited for these arguments has serious limitations.

4

,  

5

 

Primary and secondary school closures have been associated with substantial reductions over time in the effective reproduction number (Rt) across many countries (including England) and time periods.

6

,  

7

 

In contrast, data from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2020 COVID-19 Infection Survey show that the prevalence of infection among children aged 2–10 years (2%) and 11–16 years (3%) rose above the prevalence for all other age groups before the 2020 Christmas break (appendix p 4). 

Both modelling and real-world data in preprint showing rising cases in regions where the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant was prevalent during the lockdown in November, 2020 (when schools were open),

8

,  

9

 suggest that opening all schools now without robust mitigatory measures in place will probably lead to Rt rising above 1 in almost all scenarios. Modelling data by the University of Warwick and Imperial College London

10

 suggest that at least 30 000 more deaths from COVID-19 are estimated under the proposed reopening scenarios. 

Throughout February, 2021,

11

 despite fewer students being in school at this time, teaching staff were at higher risk of infection. Recent school outbreaks in northern Italy, where the B.1.1.7 variant is prevalent, are also concerning."

The study goes on to outline a series of mitigation steps to suppress transmission within the school community.

None of which is currently provided as logistical support or funded by central government at this time. 

A former OSTED chief urged teachers to put their lives on the line, for the future of the children they are teaching.

I saw the interview and to my mind he was impatient and dismissive rather than attentive to the needs of the teachers and the students. He was not calmly presenting evidence. 



Mary Bousted, of the NEU, corrected his assertion that schools were not functioning, which was a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts - she pointed out that teachers are in already in schools teaching key workers children and vulnerable children, and are helping children in a variety of ways to make up for the fall off in social services provision, as well as running remote online tuition.

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

More from the study...

"Although COVID-19 is unlikely to cause severe disease in children, estimates of the prevalence of long COVID symptoms based on the ONS Infection Survey suggest that 13% of children aged 2–10 year and 15% of those aged 12–16 years have at least one persistent symptom 5 weeks after testing positive.

Given uncertainty around the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, it would be unwise to let the virus circulate in children, with consequent risk to their families. Reopening fully in the setting of high community transmission without appropriate safeguards risks depriving many children of education and social interaction again, worsening existing inequalities.

By contributing to high community transmission, it also provides fertile ground for virus evolution and new variants."

What kind of person demands that children take these risks? The same kind who launched a war against a country based on a careful set of obvious lies, claiming that they are bringing Democracy to an oppressed people? That went well.... not!

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives

This country really needs a Union of Teachers, Parents and Students who are studying the evidence, who are learning about the evidence base for zero community transmission strategies, because it directly affects their lives now and into the future to confront this situation and to support the NHS by confronting MPs, local councils, local media, national media and any other arena's of influence with the evidence.

We cannot leave that study to the News Media or The Government. They are deliberate in their failure to present accurate and timely evidence since last December 2019.

We need the 8.9 million school children, the 2.38 million university students to be studying the evidence that exists on zero community transmission strategies. We need their parents to be on board, as learners in this.

We cannot trust the UK Government to be honest, so we must be the voices of honesty within the UK.

We need this cohort to engage with NHS staff and with other representing organisations to co-ordinate a push back at every level of society, aware that the Government and Media will not support this push back and will actively resist the most honest, evidence based analysis.

If I have repeated myself, and I have, it is only because the frustration of seeing what is possible being deliberately ignored by so many for such little purpose with so much harm attendant that I persist.

Not yet blue in the face, not yet breathless, I will continue to posit zero community transmission strategy until it is in place. It is the only strategy that makes humane sense.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Womb with a View - International Womens Day

I do not and never have accepted the culturally imposed definitions of Masculine and Feminine. Oddly enough.

 

source : the origins of unhappiness by david smail

In my youth it was, for me, a matter of a un-verbalised feeling that the behaviour of men towards women was 'odd', that it lacked personhood. It seemed like people were taking sides where no sides existed, in my mind, as a person. Men and Women as strangers.

The personhood - the happening inside is what I mean by 'person', it is not the 'personality' and it is not the culturally approved patterns.

Person to me means the emergent sensory being, the embodied being, the what it is I feel like, moment to moment

Often times look in a mirror and not recognise what I see - this to me is because the happening within of me is not on the skin, it is within, below the skin, and so of course the mirror cannot reflect that, and the within being cannot be seen by the mirror.

Today is International Women's Day. What if we have no mirrors?

https://www.internationalwomensday.com

What does that mean? Well for one thing it is about this - 80% of frontline health provision is provided by women. Internationally women provide most of the expert care for their communities, beyond mothering. This video clip shows Mike Ryan of WHO talking about who delivers health care, globally. 



That's one part of the meaning of International Women's Day and Month - why is there even such a date, such a need to express solidarity?  Because sex/gender based oppression is real. 

And this week in the UK the Male Patriarchy Bullying Conservative Government trolls the nation with a derisory 1% pay rise for health care workers in order to dim public discourse about their deliberate coercion of parents, teachers to return children they care for to COVID19 unsafe schools in the midst of a lethal epidemic.

The News Mefia rage about Meghan Markle combining Misogyny and Racism as further deflection from the truth if the situation we are in, and the deliberate mismanagement of this epidemic that has taken 140,000 lives in utterly horrific manner.

Well, for me it also means that and all of the following and much, much more. After all I am a man, a bloke, a male and I am not a woman. I do not have to endure the stares, the cat-calls, the sexualised banter, the gropes and leers, the assaults on my dignity and person that almost every woman I know endures in this culture. So yes, there's a lot more to this than my minute 'as a male' perspective could ever articulate.

Somethings are too big to fully articulate as one person. Many important subjects are too big to fully articulate as one person - thus the community that integrates all of it's perceptions, be they accurate, evidence based or intuitions or dreams or otherwise, gathers the most data. Listening works. Speaking in turn works. Speaking to one another, rather than at one another, works.

I am trying to write not as 'a man', and not as 'masculine' - I think both those terms are meaningless cultural gibberish - but as a person. What is 'masculine' other than a ludicrous fairy tale of culturally approved behaviours from within a violent hierarchy cult.

We are all citizens of the Womb. That is where I start. That is where we all start.

ani di franco - inside out

There are no exceptions to this. Everyone is a person who started out in the Womb.

Womb is evolutionary nurturant physiological neurochemical endocrinological bio-logical reality.

Bio-logic. The Logic of Life. The Logic of Nurture.

Womb is about nurture so that the child can grow, safely.

Womb is about a mother in safety, a mother who is not subject to chronic stress, a mother who is cared for as part of a whole community of socially partnered people, of all ages, working and living and growing together.

There is no competition within Womb. Womb is egalitarian.

There is no hierarchy of power within Womb.

Womb knows no nation though it does know the sound of language.

Womb knows no race though it does know the sounds of song, of breathing, of farting, of walking, of sleeping. Womb knows laughter and tears. Womb knows mystery and learning.

Womb is more common to all of us humans, primates, mammals than many other things.

And yet, in this culture there is no room for Womb in the corridors of power. 

Womb is not considered when combustion engines burn fossil fuels releasing tiny particulates that the mother breathes in and absorbs and carries to the Womb through her blood, where those particulates concentrate in the tiny foetus's blood and tissue.

Womb is not considered in the economic thinking of how to support the best possible nurturing parenting across a whole population.

Womb is not revered, Womb is not central, Womb is not celebrated, Womb is not venerated and all too often Womb is seen as a distortion of the approved shape of  woman. 

Powerlessness :  the foetus in the Womb has no view that is integrated into the deliberations of how to organise a healthy society. 

COVID19 and the chronic stress of women who are pregnant as the epidemic is wilfully mismanaged - what impacts will we see emerge in those children as infants, toddlers, children and adults?

Here, Allan Schore talks about the biology of emotional self regulation. His research, and that of many others, draws on Neuroscience, Endocrinology, Developmental Behaviour, Evolutionary Psychology to examine the critical period from Pregnancy to the stage where the child is able to walk, and thus able to explore the new world he or she is in, independently. What the biology tells us is that self regulation of emotion must be matured by that stage of increased mobility. The last thing an explorer of a new world needs is inability to self regulate his or her emotional state - tantrums are really dangerous to any explorer and biology is not stupid.

We know from a vast data set that 'the terrible twos' is a condition unknown in egalitarian and pre-conquest cultures. What we now understand is that 'the terrible twos' is a dysfunctional state crafted by motherhood that is under severe stress - it is not the mothers fault, it is the expected outcome of mothers under immense evolutionary distress.

The safety of the womb is compromised by the lack of safety in the culture. The safety of the womb that is continued by the safety of the family and safety of the extended family is compromised in this Industrial Hierarchy of Violence culture, which is historically a Patriarchy of trauma. This is historic fact. 

The difference between men and women in this culture is about power. Who mediates power and why?

It is not the genitals that are the greater difference between men and women, it is the Womb. It is not hairy chests and breasts that define us as different. It is not that the brains of men and women are different.

It is that the culturally imposed roles that impose difference in behaviour and social conditioning upon our brains are dull and oppressive, they are utilitarian roles mediate by power relationships. It is that the culture that pretends  that Womb is not central to all of everything about us is impossibly weirdly off key to the meaning of life.

We are a womb species.

And in any case, we are persons first and foremost - and for that reason I think it is an error to categorise either of us by the secondary nature of our bodies, not least by imposing cultural gender roles that ignore the meaning of the Womb of all things, that first place we are truly nurtured, that place that speaks to the nurturant truth of biology as a whole system of nurturing living activity, the place that suggests this is how it starts and long may it continue.

Womb is Life. Wombs do not need to be occupied or full to be of and for life. An un-used, empty Womb is still a womb and it is in use nonetheless. Women are not defined by being wombish. Persons are not defined by their bodies alone.

War is anti-womb.

War is child abuse.

Aristocracy exploits the womb as a utilitarian device of inheritance, alliance and power structures.

Poverty is anti-womb.

Misogyny is anti-womb.

Imposing poverty is collective child abuse.

These are some of my thoughts on International Global Earth Woman's Day.

One day is not enough, 365 days is not enough, Wombs are for the future - by nurturing the present we bring hope and beauty into the future.

By nurturing in the present we send love into the future.

I am in awe of Womb. Womb is already more than Space Exploration can ever be. 

Jacinda Ardern speaks about kindness as though it is political.

She is correct.

Cruelty is also political.

I have had enough, already, of the politic of cruelty. Haven't you had enough of that , already?

If we have a future, it is the politic of kindness, the politic of nurture  that is the continuation of Wombing - nurture, nurture, nurture.

The profit of nurture is happy wombs, happy mothers, happy fathers, happy children, happy communities, happy societies.

I do not care that 'bullying is the the way it is' - I do not care for the Alpha Male, the Power, the Empire, the Billionaire, I don't care that they are everywhere declared an inevitable imposition, a product of the struggle for survival, that this is how it is, accept it, get over it, get on with it - these cults are nothing but trouble. We don't need them. We never did. They have no real human value.

I don't see any value in women behaving like the men who are bullies in Power, carrying weapons. I don't see any value in the men who are bullies in power, carrying weapons. That is neither equality nor is it equity. It just cruelty and violence. It is stupid, venal, dumb, idiotic, cruel, callous and nasty.

Feminism is not advanced by female combat troops, by female grunts.

These are my thoughts in international women's day.

Women being bullied in public - that is the story of Diana and Meghan.

Diana and Meghan - reveal the misogynistic bullying that is the very core of the concept of Aristocracy and the functional utilitarian objectification of The Womb as a tool of hereditary Power.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Letter : Zero Community Transmission is a practical, pragmatic strategy that is protecting 1.8 billion people and their economies.

Dear Editor

There are Governments, lobbyists and others who are citing harms caused by bad management of the epidemic locally, and of the pandemic globally, to argue for opening up whilst community transmission is still very much active, which amounts to worse management, rather than arguing for best management that achieves zero community transmission.

Zero Community Transmission was dismissed as and 'not credible' by the English PM, and 'impractical' in the UK Parliament this week

This is untrue - Zero Community Transmission is protecting the health and welfare and the economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. They are pragmatic States.

Zero Community Transmission is a series of practical, common sense measures that are not by any measure extreme, and which avoid repetitive cycles of open and shutdown, as well as reducing the possibility of variants emerging from within virus laden communities.

I, and many others, would appreciate it if you could publish this letter to correct this misinformation coming from the UK Government, and others.

Yours sincerely

Corneilius Crowley

Please withhold my address and phone number from publication.

Exploiting the Harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management, rather than for better management aka zerocovid

Some misanthropic governments, malign lobby groups and misinformed citizens are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than for better management  and this is lethal. It is venal avarice exhibited those who should behave better, given the duty of care inherent in the position of power they occupy. An old story, perhaps, corrupt Governments imposing malign policy upon entire peoples under the guise of help yet does it have to be this way?

#BodgJoh #BodgeJohnson

Associating the success (and by extension, failure) of a public health response with an appeal to an exceptional national character can be dangerous. It can make learning from others less likely, and make changing course, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, a painful – perhaps impossible – process.

source: https://theconversation.com/sweden-and-japan-are-paying-the-price-for-covid-exceptionalism-151974

Ordinary people who are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management are misinformed, some are mislead and there are others, a minority who are content to remain wilfully ignorant.

1.8 billion people and their economies are being protected by zero community transmission strategies, and have been for over a year.

The news media, the government and their sponsors and blinded supporters and the 'freedom' mob (who pretend to themselves they oppose the Governments bad policy) are all refusing to follow the Science,  and what they are doing is arguing for worse management, whilst deliberately ignoring the evidence, the science and the lived experience of 1.8 billion people?

1.8 billion people in China, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Finland, Norway and a bunch of other countries following the science and the best public health practice is a huge evidence base.

Zero community transmission is a series of  mostly fairly straightforward policies, they are not extreme actions, they are common sense, science led actions that suppress a virus in a community and then maintain a situation where community transmission is not allowed to erupt.

The key elements of best public health outbreak management in no particular order include:

1. generalised mask wearing,
2. general attention to hand hygiene,
3. physical distancing where necessary,
4. localised person to person contact tracing,
5. fullest support to anyone who has been in contact with a known case to quarantine,
6. testing for presence of the virus and for antibodies on a community level around outbreaks,
7. fullest support for treatment of symptoms in isolation, away from the community,
8, Fever clinics to protect general hospital systems.
9. tightly quarantined borders,
10. full support for all workers if and when they need to isolate,
11. clear  timely information available on outbreak status to citizens in their locality,
12. clear and consistently science grounded communications from Government and Health Authorities 32. and an absence of profiteering - meaning the profit is the outcome for the whole community or population.

In essence chasing down the virus as a behavioural dynamic supported by national and local governance and health systems.

This is what Governments and 1.8 billion people are doing across East Asia and Oceania and it is working.

These actions are all being done without a vaccine - it's great that a number of vaccines have been developed and are helping, yet they are not the solution to a virus that mutates in order to over come barriers placed in it's way.

The solution is to stop the transmission of the virus. A virus that does not meet human host dies. Slowing transmission down is not that. Stopping transmission achieves that goal.

How could people I personally know ally with the UK Ruling Faction and ignore that evidence?

How could people I personally know appeal for opening up without the better management?

What kind of myopia is that?

New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan and UK had the same Science and Evidence on February 2020 - NZ, Vietnam and Taiwan chose to follow the science, closely.

UK decided to ignore the Science.

The different outcomes are VERY clear.

www.zerocovid.uk for more information on what zero community transmission science is.

I argued for zero community transmission back in March 2020 and again in April 2020, without understanding the role that slow spread and variants were going to play - now we know more about variants and the fact that they are part of the same problematic behavioural dynamic.

The longer the virus has to play within any given population the more likely it will generate variants that survive what ever we throw at it. Especially within countries that have medically advanced treatment for AIDS and other immune disease states, where the virus can live within a human body for months on end.

"These questions are especially important at a time when environmental pressures, such as expanding herd immunity, vaccine-induced immunity, antiviral therapies, and public health intervention strategies, may — through selective pressure — promote virus survival and escape."

Source : https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcibr2032888

Has any heard of the Vietnamese or New Zealand Variants?

Exactly!

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Landing a lander on Mars whilst bombing Yemeni villagers is not 'Progress'.

Landing a lander on Mars whilst bombing Yemeni villagers is not progress, just as landing a man on the Moon whilst bombing Vietnamese villagers was not 'progress'' - there is an argument that it represents a technical progress, but that is all it represents, at best, and to hold it up as human progress or cultural progress is nonsense, irrational and an avoidance of the realities we all must face.

Man on the Moon 1969

Vietnam 1969

Yemen 2020

Mars Lander 2021

A poem, by Gil Scot Heron, might find resonance today in Yemen or Libya or Syria, and indeed within the United States even still, where Racist violence by Police is as common as pie.

A rat done bit my sister Nell.

(with Whitey on the moon)

Her face and arms began to swell.

(and Whitey's on the moon)

I can't pay no doctor bill.

(but Whitey's on the moon)

Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.

(while Whitey's on the moon)

The man jus' upped my rent las' night.

('cause Whitey's on the moon)

No hot water, no toilets, no lights.

(but Whitey's on the moon)

I wonder why he's uppi' me?

('cause Whitey's on the moon?)

I was already payin' 'im fifty a week.

(with Whitey on the moon)

Taxes takin' my whole damn check,

Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,

The price of food is goin' up,

An' as if all that shit wasn't enough

A rat done bit my sister Nell.

(with Whitey on the moon)

Her face an' arm began to swell.

(but Whitey's on the moon)

Was all that money I made las' year

(for Whitey on the moon?)

How come there ain't no money here?

(Hm! Whitey's on the moon)

Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill

(of Whitey on the moon)

I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,

Airmail special

(to Whitey on the moon)

Whitey's on the Moon by Gill Scott Heron 1970

I was 14 years old, 1973, when I realised the tech spin-offs of war were not worth the harms that war causes. To claim the benefits is to ignore the meaning of the harms.

Infamously Madelaine Albright dismissed the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children over the course on a decade of warfare against Iraqi Ruler, Saddam Hussein, who was elevated to power by American influence on Iraqi politics "We think, we think It was worth it!" was her thoughtless commentary, when questioned about those deaths, the cost to Iraqi civil society and it was indicative of the cult she was a member of.

Madelaine Albright - "I think this is a very hard choice"
- a choice made for the Iraqi children and their parents, not by them.

The culture of Violent Hierarchy, the culture of competing industrialised militarised powers as the dominant culture among modern human societies, is a cult. Generalised acceptance of any cult is typically based on false beliefs, misinformation, gaslighting and disinformation. I know this from personal experience, having been hooked into a number of cults in my life time. 

Cultish Beliefs.

The Malthusiams of Boris Johnson are likewise cultish beliefs which are directing the disastrous management of the Corona Virus epidemic sweeping across Britain in successive waves - he obviously believes the costs of the 130,000 (and rising) fatalities, the 250,000 long covid cases, the disproportionate burden borne by disabled people are a price worth paying 'to protect the Economy' (which it clearly is not doing).

Those who in the UK compare the costs of the 'successful' Mars lander operation against the budget of the deliberately 'failed' UK Test and Contact Trace mission are missing the point.

Comparing one success of the abuse system against another failure of the abuse system, without calling to mind that it is an abuse system, without acknowledging in full the harms caused by the abuse system and without putting the harms front and foremost for attention, accountability and prevention is irrational, it is a non sense.

Crowing over the success of one element of the abuse system to highlight the failure of the other is  illogical, dismissive and deeply, profoundly disrespectful and callous..

It's very similar in behavioural dynamic to what happens within an abuse family dynamic.

An abuse family system, institutionalised.

The same 'family' system that landed the lander on Mars is waging illegal, amoral wars that are killing families, destroying communities, crushing entire civilian infrastructures of whole countries.

The same 'family' system that landed the lander on mars and photographed the landing from above the lander, in live real time, from the drop modules angle, an 'amazing feat' which 'has never been seen/done before' is engaged in wars that cause wholesale slaughter, and is deliberately mismanaging epidemics that are killing hundreds of thousands of people.

The UN called for a total ceasefire of wars in April 2020. Their call for common sense was ignored by the primary war mongers.

"Freedom!" people cry. "We have such great Freedoms!" 

Others claim: "Our Freedoms are being imperilled! Don't wear a Muzzle!"

Both of these are lies.  Cultish lies.

In the UK and USA there is no public domain discussion of zero community transmission strategy.  We know that News Media in co-ordination with the political hegemony of the ruling faction are censoring any discussion of zero-covid strategies. There is no freedom.  The temporary need to stay indoors is not a loss of freedom, as some idiots claim. It is common sense. Stopping the spread is spreading the love. 

There are lobbyists who are deploying the harms caused by bad management to argue for opening up, which is worse management, rather than argue for better management as in a zero community transmission strategy. They too talk non sense, they adopt an irrational and holly unjustifiable position.

Vulnerable Peoples Lives Matter.  

Vulnerable people such as the disabled, people with 'learning disabilities', people with chronic disease are subject to 'rationing' of healthcare resources and doctors are ordered by Government to adopt 'do not resuscitate' orders as a rationing policy for these vulnerable people, who cannot dissent let alone consent to such a decision, simply because the Government of the day refuses to adopt a zero community transmission strategy. 

Between 24 January and 20 November 2020 in England, the risk of death involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) was 3.1 times greater for more-disabled men and 1.9 times greater for less-disabled men, compared with non-disabled men; among women, the risk of death was 3.5 times greater for more-disabled women and 2.0 times greater for less-disabled women, compared with non-disabled women.

source: Office for National Statistics 11 February 2021

We do not, as ordinary people in England, have the freedom to prevent the State, the Government and the News Media from ignoring the science. We do not have the freedom to prevent the State, The Government and the News Media from deliberately ignoring the proven established public health mandates for handling an epidemic, just as we have no freedom to prevent the State from engaging in war and pursuing deliberate harm causation policy. 

Boris Johnson lied in Parliament about the efficacy of zero community transmission, which we know is protecting the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. It's not rocket science, it is best public health epidemiological science. He claims his policy is led by data, not dates and yet he coerces 10 million school children to attend unsafe schools on an arbitrary date even as community transmission is well above levels recorded prior to the first lock down two weeks short of one year previous.

Johnson lies in Parliament.

Tony Blair is still a free man.

Tony Blair also lied in Parliament.

When Prime Ministers lie in Parliament why must millions of innocent people pay the price?.

Progress? What Progress?

Landing a lander on Mars whilst killing hundreds of thousands of citizens with bad management of an epidemic is not progress. Removing Saddam Hussein at the cost of 600,000 Iraqi lives was not bringing democracy to Iraq, it does not represent progress.

We need to have one - progress - without the other - avoidable harms to vulnerable citizens -to be able to say that we are a safe and functional Democracy. That would indeed represent human progress.

We need to be able to land a lander on Mars and not be waging war, not be deliberately mismanaging an epidemic to be a safe and healthy Democracy.

This system is a cult. It is not a culture, it is barely a society, it is a nasty, violent hierarchical  cult.  we the ordinary citizens are caught in it's grip, stuck between a wall and a hard place, doomed by the cult's desire to retain, maintain, enhance and project it's power above all other considerations. I do not blame ordinary people - we are all victimised and dehumanised by this situation.

When a person has internalised the cult, that person cannot see it for what it is.

When a person has de-colonised from the cult, that person can see it for what it is.

This is the 21st Century.

Welcome to the truth.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."